In article <37923AEC.5CA9 at online.no>, Tore Lund <tl001 at online.no> writes
>Nick Medford wrote:
>>>> I'm trying to picture the reaction of your average ophthalmologist being
>> asked to see such a patient. (Is this what you mean by "vision
>> specialist"?)
>>Agreed, "vision specialist" was a rather silly term. What I had in mind
>was researchers specifically interested in the mechanics of visual depth
>perception, and most of those are not even doctors, I suppose.
Well, neuroscientists are an eclectic lot. Their original background
might be in medicine, psychology, biochemistry, physics, computer
science....etc etc. (Apologies to all those disciplines not mentioned.)
So good research in the field generally involves cross-specialty
collaborations, which is one of the things that makes it so interesting.
>>What I have been trying to elicit is reports of unusual visual
>perspectives and possible explanations for them in terms of this or that
>model of vision. Sorry if that has not been clear.
Well I agree completely now you put it like that. There was a recent
paper in Brain by Ffytche and Howard (I don't have the exact reference,
left it at work, will pick it up tomorrow) which explored the
neuropsychiatry of various types of visual misperception, in a way that
sought to shed light on the brain's processing of visual information. I
think this would be the kind of thing you propose.
As a related aside: Two Russian studies looked at pain threshold in
depersonalisation patients and found it was significantly raised. The
reason for looking at this was that, amongst all the other phenomena
already mentioned in this thread, these patients sometimes describe a
numbness and lack of tactile sensations in their bodies, especially
their hands. So here we have an interesting interaction between a
subtle disturbance of consciousness (please, nobody ask me to define
this dread word) and a peripheral sensory system. Which is analogous,
perhaps,to the visual disturbances you mentioned.
Refs for these 2 studies:
Brovar AV.
[Skin sensitivity in patients with depersonalization and derealization
syndromes].
Vopr Psikhiatr Nevropatol. 1965;11:411-20. Russian. No abstract
available.
PMID: 5883083; UI: 66135299.
Moroz BT, et al.
[Study of pain sensitivity based on the indicators of electro-
odontometry
in patients with depersonalization and depressive disorders].
Zh Nevropatol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova. 1990;90(10):81-2. Russian.
PMID: 1963007; UI: 91143277.
The articles are in Russian but English abstracts are at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=1963007&form=6&d
b=m&
Dopt=b
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=5883083&form=6&d
b=m&
Dopt=b
Best wishes
--
Nick Medford
